#kundimanfellows

[kundimanforever]

For each day of National Poetry Month one of our fellows will explore the breadth of poetry in three ways: through a question from another fellow, through a poem and through a writing prompt, #writetoday.

[QUESTION]

Tarfia Faizullah asks, Do you think it's possible to stop writing about the past?

R.A. Villanueva answers, No. And if we’re really honest with ourselves as writers, I don’t think we really want to stop remembering—to Eternal Sunshine our way around the aftermaths that matter.

Perhaps the reality is that the past makes and mars us in ways we can neither control nor anticipate. Better to find some “ceremony of words to patch the havoc” than to live as amnesiacs. Better to dive into the wreck than try to forget the sinking.

  [POEM]

Swarm

We were well down the ventral axis            when Fr. Luke noticed. Our cuts  steady through the skin, our scalpels            already through the thin give  of the sternum. With each bullfrog            pinned to its block and double-  pithed by nail, he had by then            talked us clean through the lungs,  past a three-chambered heart couched            in tissue and vascular dye. We must  have been deeper among the viscera            when he heard us laughing,  not at the swarm of black eggs            spilling from the oviducts to  slime the cuffs of our blazers,            but at a phallus, jury-rigged from  foil and rubber bands hanging off the crucifix,            hovering above a chart of light-  independent reactions. This was nothing            like the boys lowing through recitation  their antiphon for the layman whose wife            we heard was trampled by livestock  over Trimester break. Nothing at all            like Sr. Mary being made to face  the bathhouse scene from Spartacus in slow-            motion or her freshmen rewinding again  and again stock films of chariot drivers pitched            from their mounts, dragged  to their ends only to float backwards,            hands bound up once more  in the reins. The Dean of Men confessed            he knew of no prayer or demerit  that could redeem such disgrace,            could conceive of no greater sin  against the Corpus. Transgressors, all of you,            he said and closed the door behind him,  refusing to look at us or the thing            which seemed to shimmer and twitch  with each frog’s reflex kick against our forceps.            He held us there far beyond  the last bell, waiting for just one among us            to want forgiveness or for a single boy  to take back this mockery of the body            our Lord had made.

Originally published in AGNI, #70

[BIO]

  R.A. Villanueva is the author of Reliquaria, winner of the 2013 Prairie Schooner Book Prize. A founding editor of Tongue: A Journal of Writing & Art, he lives in Brooklyn.

[kundimanforever]

Cristiana Baik, Pt. 1: Fifty-eight orchid species are native to the Lake Superior basin, their nomenclature of feminine seduction:

For each day of National Poetry Month one of our fellows will explore the breadth of poetry in three ways: through a question from another fellow, through a poem and through a writing prompt, #writetoday.

[QUESTION]

Soham Patel asks, Why the long face? Why round belly laughs?

Cristiana Baik answers, Do I have a long face [laughing]?Two years ago, my partner and I drove a U-Haul from New York to Minnesota, which kicked off a long period of disruptions. I’ve moved more than anyone else I know, having never lived in a place for more than three years since going to college. In Chicago (where I went to school) I began to write poetry, which became intricately tied with experiences of displacement and being othered. Water is commonly a theme in my work, because bodies of water have always told me where I am. It’s been a universal marker, no matter where I’ve lived (Los Angeles: the Pacific; Chicago: Lake Michigan; Tuscaloosa: Black Warrior River; Duluth, MN: Lake Superior). This is a long-winded way of saying I’m sure the long face has something to do with constant destabilizations, which have also created fertile grounding for critical thinking and poems.

Round belly laughs: it’s about keeping it real.

[POEM]

Essentially Description

                               For Ian

We cross Blatnik Bridge the view of the bay opening the lake a porous border where every ear finds a buoy            a waveform to lean in towards

We knew there was no looking back just around

       Four-day drive, Woodside to Duluth        Fifth day, the U-Haul crosses the bridge

It was autumnal, the atmosphere carnelian washing the evergreens, steeples, and industry We walk to Sir Benedict’s Tavern and drink in silence, realizing this was home

                     the trope of a swinging door 

Ω

I recall writing poems all essentially descriptions of light splitting the lake’s surface spectral, an emerald shield exposed the lake telling me in ripples                the present rippling time its so forths, so ons 

Ω

It’s only upon leaving that I learn the facts:

Lake Superior’s 3,000,000,000,000,000 gallons could flood continents

Over 300 streams and rivers empty into Lake Superior

Fifty-eight orchid species are native to the Lake Superior basin, their nomenclature of feminine seduction:

          Stemless lady-slipper           Slender ladies tresses           Purple tresses           Heart-leaf twayblade           Nodding ladies

These facts tracking my Midwest 

Ω

Then in a dream, the flood begins

The scene is a painting, a placement, a viewpoint:                 the edge of evergreens, birch, pine                 the edge cerulean, indigo, sometimes sleet-grey, sometimes all-white

There is sound, water’s refining of limestone, sandstone, Thompsonite, agates

I wake to an inland sea water the essential description from Point Barrow to Tierra del Fuego

[BIO]

Cristiana Baik is a poet who resides in New York City. She works at ART21 and is the Managing Editor of Essay Press and The Conversan

[kundimanforever]

Soham Patel, Pt. 1:To hear // It sounds like something breaking / in unison with the cat’s / meow

For each day of National Poetry Month one of our fellows will explore the breadth of poetry in three ways: through a question from another fellow, through a poem and through a writing prompt, #writetoday.

[QUESTION]

Bushra Rehman asks, Soham, I loved your series which took place in a motel and concerned the lives of a family of characters. Could you speak to the ways in which location and the idea of family influence your work?

Soham Patel answers, The first drafts of the writing in Riva:  A Chapter came from a fiction workshop with Carol Guess at Western Washington University.  We were reading “The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things” and something about the way the setting of the truck stops are written about in that book reminded me of one of my first jobs, which was cleaning rooms in my mom and dad’s motel—and so the character of Riva was born from there.  Ongoing:  location and family—they both influence the work because they are holding in my body.  I’m keen on how both at once have a certain permanence and also are always changing.  Sometimes the thought of a particular location place will remind me to breathe in another way and so the writing’s rhythm changes.  Sometimes the idea of family has me remember particularities of my body parts (my nose looks like my dad’s looks like my nephew’s) and that translates into the work by way of association, image, or idea. 

[POEM]

portrait in sound:

Blood-rushed, ears call in framed fragment clips nightly (purple lobe, remembered piercing popped discord mesh to silence). To hear

It sounds like something breaking in unison with the cat’s meow in the background: braided luck and deliberation.

(To hear listeners shore up and stop will mean no more air in the bladder of the fish.) She said the sensation was some- thing like a throb in her heart.

[BIO]

  Soham Patel’s other chapbook is ‘and nevermind the storm’ (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs).    

[kundimanforever]

Bushra Rehman, Pt. 1: Visions of you played / like two second sitcoms

For each day of National Poetry Month one of our fellows will explore the breadth of poetry in three ways: through a question from another fellow, through a poem and through a writing prompt, #writetoday.

[QUESTION]

marlon esguerra asks,  For the writer, what is a lie? Does (or rather, how does) your telling and retelling of your stories alter your memory of a subject?

Bushra Rehman answers, Of course I am afraid like most writers that I will be accused of lying when I write. But I know it’s inevitable to be accused. Everyone has a version of the truth which is equally valid, even a person I would disagree with intensely.

So being a writer, like I am, who is slightly political-the slightly was a joke- I get accused of not telling the truth because I did not represent someone else’s experience accurately. This is the burden of representation in American literature for someone like me, a Pakistani writer from New York City.

Still, I write fiction, by definition a liar’s art. I love recreating my memories the way I remember them, like little dioramas in my brain, reliving my favorites and spinning some into daydreams to enhance the pleasure of reliving them. 

[POEM]

Simply Knocking on the Air

I willed you from the air Or did I simply hear you knocking?

Visions of you played like two second sitcoms in my brain.

There you were in a diaper on the stream rocks.

There you were catching baby trout in your fingers.

Before you were born, I heard whispers in the forest and dawn.

I reached back to grab hold of the cord which tied me to my grandmother.

She willed this too from the beyond.

[BIO]

Bushra Rehman’s first novel Corona, a dark comedy about being South Asian in the United States was noted among Poets & Writers Best Debut Fiction, featured in the LA Review of Books among a new wave of South Asian American Literature and is a LAMBDA finalist. 

[kundimanforever]

For each day of National Poetry Month one of our fellows will explore the breadth of poetry in three ways: through a question from another fellow, through a poem and through a writing prompt, #writetoday.

[QUESTION]

Iris Law asks, Your forthcoming book is called The Dead Wrestler Elegies. What drew you to wrestling as a subject of your poetry and the overarching conceit of this project? If you were a pro wrestler, what would your in-ring persona be?

W. Todd Kaneko answers,

1. Because when I was a kid, I watched professional wrestling with my father.

2. Because professional wrestling is a marker of American cultural identity.

3. Because of legendary characters and modern mythologies.

4. Because people are still obsessed with what is real and what is fake.

5. Because of manly eloquence.

6. Because when I was a kid I wanted to grow up to be a professional wrestler.

7. Because I still want to grow up to be a professional wrestler, sometimes.

8. Because professional wrestling is the poetry of violence.

9. Because it’s still real to me.

10. Because.

[POEM]

Luna Vachon is Your Shadow in the Darkness    

   Our history is rich with pain and venom, violence and evil …    from this day forward, I will hunt your very breath, I will be    your shadow in the darkness. And then soon, very very soon,    I will wipe you from this earth.”        —Luna Vachon, professional wrestler

She is butcher and goddess, a throat full of grackles, a vampire’s grin.

She is snake tongue, fistmonger and kill bride—she is hunger. She is the lightning eye, the rooster’s spurs. Your father will show you his skeleton one day, your mother the taint of her blood.

The cemetery is no place for women slung out in halter tops and bare mid-riffs. Where there is no such thing as death, there is only death. She is that ravenous spirit chewing your name.

She is the lunacy that comes with grief, lizard tail and owl heart, a hound driven mad by streetlights mistaken for the moon. She is the ear spider, the winter branches.

Her skin is the color of woe. She is the tombstone, the meantime. She is a hooked angel excavating your father with obsidian claws. She is your mother telling you a story.

First published in Rhino Poetry.

[BIO]

W. Todd Kaneko is the author of The Dead Wrestler Elegies (Curbside Splendor 2014) and teaches at Grand Valley State University in Michigan.

[kundimanforever]

Eugenia Leigh, Pt. 1: What I wouldn’t give to graze that silence.

For each day of National Poetry Month one of our fellows will explore the breadth of poetry in three ways: through a question from another fellow, through a poem and through a writing prompt, #writetoday.

[QUESTION]

Michelle Penaloza asks, I have my pop icon obsessions:

Who are yours? Have you ever written about them? (I have tried various poems about all of these people, but have yet to be pleased with any). Please answer with pictures of your celebrity artists obsessions, elaborating upon your obsessions as you like!

Eugenia Leigh answers, 

This question exposes my humiliating secret: I have little to no knowledge about celebrity culture. It’s true. I feel both ashamed and irrelevant, and I considered purchasing a box of old People magazines (is that what I’m supposed to read?!) to answer this question. I was raised in a hyper-strict religious environment & listened to only church songs (or the Beatles or Air Supply because my parents had their weaknesses) until I was 12 and discovered my alarm clock was also a fancy radio. Yes, I’m making excuses.

 One of the only poems I’ve written with a direct reference to a contemporary artist is “Every Hair on Your Head” (posted below), which was written on March 6, 2010, the day Mark Linkous, the musician behind Sparklehorse, took his life. I looped the song “Hundreds of Sparrows” over and over again at El Beit, a coffee shop in Williamsburg, and wrote this poem.

[POEM]

Every Hair on Your Head

Every hair on your head is counted. You are worth hundreds of sparrows.

                        — Sparklehorse, “Hundreds of Sparrows”

The day you pushed a bullet through your heart, the length of a day on earth shortened by a millionth of a second.

That same day, a NASA satellite captured an image of a dust storm, Chile withstood its one hundred thirtieth aftershock in a week, and I glimpsed a bird, twitching

on the floor of a Brooklyn metro station. Its eyeballs bulged as if to literally absorb the ocular world

and I shuddered away. For hours, I saw that flinching creature in my mind. I saw hundreds of similar birds shimmering into the station to lie

next to it—a quilt of silvery bodies tiled wing to wing. On good days, I want to be saved. Most days, I want

every savior in our hell—so they’ll know torment in the bloodstream—death’s whistling, ceaseless, blurring the cleanest heartbeats.       My first time, I was thirteen.

I tested five pills. My stomach barely ached, I ate ramen, lived, solved math problems. But for days before that, I envisioned my body smeared. Inside out. A swarthy, dazzling canvas.

What I wouldn’t give to graze that silence.

Did you do it standing up or crouching?     Which was the bigger surprise— the gun punching    or the angel catching you?

Previously published in Best New Poets 2010.

[BIO]

Eugenia Leigh is the author of Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows (Four Way Books, 2014).

[kundimanforever]

Brynn Saito, Pt. 1: Go to the ends of the earth / girl / go like a leopard

For each day of National Poetry Month one of our fellows will explore the breadth of poetry in three ways: through a question from another fellow, through a poem and through a writing prompt, #writetoday.

[QUESTION]

Cathy Linh Che asks, In writing, what are you most afraid of?

Brynn Saito responds, 

I fear that the poem knows something that I do not yet know. This is also my greatest hope. I get afraid that, through poetry, I’ll uncover something about myself that will completely alter the story I’ve constructed about my life. In the same breath, I’m afraid my own writing will, one day, cease to surprise me, cease to reveal an unknown. I’m reading Mary Ruefle’s cutting and beautiful book of lectures,Madness, Rack and Honey. In it, she talks about craft: a craft is a thing, she reminds us—a boat, or a ship, or a raft. “Great skill is involved in building a craft, for it is far from easy to make things that float of fly.” Every time I sit down to it, I fear both the failure of flight and the possibility of some wild orbit through the exhilarating dark. But I believe in my fear: fear is useful; fear is tied to wonder—that feeling of trembling before the terrifying angel (Rilke!), that rush of living on the edge of what is known. 

[POEM]

W.W. ON HOW TO BE FREE

Go to the ends of the earth / girl / go like a leopard

chasing her longing / go like the grasses grown

and cut and blowing over the valley by autumn

fire-winds / Go away from the valley / girl / go

to the city / go like a fighter / with gold ore

precision / with penny-like pain / with plenty

of power / Please ignore / what you can girl /

the growls in your absence / the men with their ice-blocks 

melting in arms / the men with their mine-field hearts /

The women like me / wishing you well / whistling

wisdom into your spine / learn to lie to survive / girl /

learn to outlast the flame / learn the art of surprise

[BIO]

Brynn Saito is a poet and writer living in the SF Bay Area. She wrote a book called The Palace of Contemplating Departure.

[kundimanforever]

Cathy Linh Che, Pt. 1 In the Underworld, / I starve a season / while the world wilts

For each day of National Poetry Month one of our fellows will explore the breadth of poetry in three ways: through a question from another fellow, through a poem and through a writing prompt, #writetoday.

[QUESTION]

Debbie Yee asks, Cathy, Are there real or virtual spaces you go to for research? What or where are they? What do they inform you?

Cathy Linh Che answers, 

Thanks, Debbie, for the question! My answer is roundabout, but I do get around to it. Here it goes: 

Like Paul Tran, and so many others, I was sexually molested as a child—and have felt the ripple effects into adulthood.

I write about my experiences because I'm uneasy with the silence. I'm uneasy with the abject and unfathomable horror surrounding the topic—as if sexual molestation is not something that happens to one in three girls and one in seven boys. At a table with ten folks, several people have been sexually violated at some point in their lives (whether we identify as victims, survivors, or something else), or are perpetrators. So, it's not 'unimaginable'—it's lived experiences that we all share.

 When I have a concept or an image I want to explore, I look up definitions and etymologies on the internet. I do Google images searches. I turn to different mythologies and origin stories. I buy books and read up on psychology and psychoanalysis. I go home and inhabit spaces where these incidences have taken place. I look at personal experiences again and again—after all “research” is about looking closely and looking repeatedly.

Type in the word rape into the Online Etymology Dictionary and you get:

rape (v.)

late 14c., "seize prey; abduct, take by force," from rape (n.) and from Anglo-French raper (Old French rapir)

When I learned that rape originally meant to abduct, or to carry off by force, I thought of the myth of Persephone in a new way.

I saw her abduction, then being carried off into Hades, as a kind of childhood rape story—and from there, I wrote.

Editor's Note: If you are interested in information about support services as a sexual assault survivor, please visit RAINN.

[POEM]

Pomegranate

I open my chest and birds flock out. In my mother’s garden, the roses flare toward the sun, but I am an arrow

pointing back. I am Persephone, a virgin abducted.

In the Underworld, I starve a season while the world wilts

into the ghost of a summer backyard. My hunger open and raw.

I lay next to a man who did not love me— my body a performance,

his body a single eye— a director watching an actress commanding her

to scintillate.

I was the clumsy acrobat. When he came, I split open like a pomegranate

and ate six of my own ruddy seeds.

I was the whipping boy. Thorny, barbed wire wound around a muscular heart.

Originally published in Split (Alice James Books, 2014)

[BIO]

Cathy Linh Che would like to start a conversation with you. Email her.